Riot Games has released a short follow-up patch to League of Legends version 12.2 in order to balance the game’s newest champion. Zeri, the Spark of Zaun, was added to the live game last week with the patch, but it appears that her interactions with a critical item have proven to be a little too potent so far, so the team has resolved the issue.
“We just micro-patched out a nerf for Zeri’s hurricane interaction,” principal character designer August ‘RiotAugust’ Browning says on Twitter. “It was looking very strong.” This relates to the champ’s interaction with the legendary item Runaan’s Hurricane, which it seems was adding a significant boost to Zeri’s prowess on the Rift due to the way it worked alongside her ultimate, Lightning Crash. “R chain lightning is no longer an on-hit effect (which means hurricane bolts no longer apply it)”, the dev explains.
So, it appears her ultimate’s lightning attacks were capable of dealing some big damage to multiple foes by acting as on-hit effects when paired with the item in certain builds, which was giving Zeri just a little too much of an edge.
As Dot Esports notes, Zeri’s current win-rate is looking pretty sweet at the moment, with builds that hinge on the powerful on-hit attributes of Trinity Force and then Runaan’s Hurricane playing a key part. Perhaps we’ll see this drop to some degree, and player approaches to Zeri change, now this nerf has come to the live game.
As for Zeri’s other powerful combos, such as her interaction with Black Cleaver, Browning replies to a fan on Twitter that the one-shot it takes to fully stack the effect in that case “is intended”, adding, “BC stacks on instances of physical damage, not individual spells or attacks. (This is why it’s good on Darius and past versions of Lucian).”
